Playing Nice

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“THAT WAS DOWN TO Miles,” Maddie said flatly. “It must have been.”

I flopped into a chair. “Of course. His lawyer would have been sent a copy of that report as well. And Miles’s first thought would have been to ask himself how he could use it to his advantage. If people think we took Theo deliberately, they’ll think we definitely shouldn’t be allowed to keep him.”

“Can you call your contact at the Mail? Ask them not to run the story?”

“I think that might make it even worse.”

We sat in silence, too exhausted even to make coffee.

“Why did you lie about the security tag?” Maddie said at last.

I glanced at her uneasily. “What do you mean?”

“When you told Grace Matthews you saw the tag on Theo within minutes of him being moved to the hospital incubator, that wasn’t right. You know it wasn’t. And now one of the senior doctors has contradicted you.”

“I must have been mistaken.”

Maddie’s eyes searched my face. “Did you do it for Bronagh?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

“Why?” Maddie said simply. But nothing was simple in this situation anymore.

“She’s been suspended,” I said eventually. “I wanted to help her out.”

“Oh Jesus.” Maddie started to laugh, a hollow laugh that turned into a howl. “We’re losing our son, and you wanted to help a nurse. Which in turn has implicated you in a criminal offense. You are…You are such a cretin sometimes, Pete. Always trying to be the good guy. Always—” She stopped suddenly. “Is that all it was?”

“What do you mean?” I said, even though I knew exactly what she meant.

“Is there anything between you and Bronagh that I should know about?” she demanded.

I looked her in the eye. “No. No, absolutely not.”

And that was true, if you were thinking like a lawyer and taking her question at its face value. There was nothing she should know about. Very much the reverse, in fact.

68

Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 34: Facebook Messenger exchange between Bronagh Walsh and Peter Riley, deleted by Peter Riley the next day and by Bronagh Walsh two years later.

Hey Pete, how’s tricks? The bike ride looks amaaaaazing!!! Actually going to be in York next w/e with some friends on a hen so we might look you lot up! We’re all qualified nurses so can tend to any walking (cycling?) wounded!!

Thanks Bronagh. Plenty of sore calves, aching groins & pulled muscles over here but we’re plowing on. Determined to make the target for the NICU!

Put like that it’s almost our duty to come around and patch you up isn’t it!!! (Hmm probably can’t do much for the pulled muscles or sore calves…)

69

MADDIE

THE DAILY MAIL ARTICLE appears on page eight, below a picture of a hunted-looking Pete. TIMES JOURNALIST “STOLE BABY”—BUT STILL WANTS OUR NHS TO PAY is the headline. It quotes the most damning bits of NHS Resolution’s report, as well as parts of the article Pete himself wrote, the one he’d told them couldn’t be printed yet, in which he’d described how traumatic it had been finding out about the mix-up. In this new context, it seems chillingly self-interested—a brazen attempt to paint himself as a victim, in order to prize more money out of the health service. Theo isn’t identified by name, “for legal reasons,” but instead is described as “Child X, an adorable toddler with a huge grin and an exuberant zest for life.”

As for why Pete stole him, the article makes it clear that Pete’s a cold-blooded, quick-thinking monster who saw an opportunity to foist his vulnerable, brain-damaged baby on someone else, then tried to profit from his own villainy to boot. Toward the end of the piece is a quote from an “expert,” some pop psychologist who’s appeared on various morning-TV programs. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be an example of ‘hero syndrome,’?” he says helpfully. “We see it sometimes with firefighters and policemen, creating crises and setting fires purely in order to be the one who averts disaster and is admired as a result. But increasingly, we’re also seeing it with those who want to be perfect parents or caregivers.” The apparent contradiction between Pete as a heartless monster and Pete as someone who wants to be admired for his parenting skills is completely ignored, of course.

Pete himself seems utterly shell-shocked. That it’s a newspaper, his old industry, doing this to him only adds insult to injury. He becomes very quiet, his eyes wide, poleaxed and bewildered.

Anita recommends a colleague specializing in criminal law, who arranges for Pete to attend a police interview voluntarily. We should get our initial response in quickly, the new solicitor says, even though his advice relating to the interview itself is identical to Justin Watts’s: Answer “no comment” to everything, in the hope the police will decide the allegation is unprovable either way. I can tell Pete hates that strategy, and at the slightest encouragement from me would abandon it. By nature he’s someone who likes to cooperate, to be well thought of by authority figures. And we’ve all seen video footage of child molesters and serial killers monotonously answering “no comment” to the police’s questions, the implication being that they’re too callous even to admit their own crimes. I make sure I back the lawyer’s strategy every inch of the way.

This new solicitor, Mark Cooper, charges ï¿¡220 an hour plus VAT.

I’d expected the police investigation to be as slow and Byzantine as every other part of the legal processes we’re now embroiled in. But while Pete is attending the interview, the doorbell rings. On the doorstep are a uniformed police sergeant, a WPC, and a man in plainclothes who introduces himself as a detective sergeant. He shows me his ID and a warrant to take Pete’s laptop and phone.

I don’t even have Pete’s phone—he has it with him. I watch as they unplug his MacBook and place it in an evidence bag. “Do you want the power supply?” I hear myself saying.

The detective shakes his head. “We’ve got plenty of those.” They’re almost the only words we exchange. Five minutes after entering the house, they’re gone.

Taking Pete’s laptop doesn’t fit with Mark Cooper’s prediction that the police will only go through the motions, I think. Or is that the point? That now they’ll be able to say they looked for evidence and found none?

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous this whole thing is. Even in some mad parallel universe where the allegations were true and Pete did steal Theo, it isn’t as if he’d have googled “how to steal a baby” beforehand. And anyone who knows him would realize just how crazy the notion of Pete as a heartless, calculating monster is.

But Pete as a would-be hero? an inner voice whispers disloyally. That’s more feasible. I remember the way he was so good in the NICU, even syringing my breast milk into Theo’s nasogastric tube so that the nurses didn’t have to do it. When Theo thrived, Pete, by extension, shared the credit. And yes, he’d undeniably basked in it, just a little. Saint Peter. The best, most caring dad in the NICU…

Stop. I dubbed him Saint Peter because he is a saint—almost irritatingly so, sometimes, but a saint nonetheless. No one knows better than me that his caring nature isn’t an act.

But he might have done it for you, the inner voice says.

And I stop dead, because I know that, at least, could be…not true, obviously, but not impossible. Pete kept the stark reality about hypoxia from me that day because he wanted to protect me. He would never have stolen a healthy baby for his own sake—but might he, could he, have stolen a healthy baby because he thought I couldn’t cope with the alternative?

Was it his very sainthood that prompted him to commit the most terrible of acts—not out of heartlessness, but the very opposite, love?

* * *